after the death of Trenchard. Sir Robert Walpole at length took Gordon into pay, to defend his administration, and made him commis sioner of the wine licences. He died in 1750. Gordon translated Tacitus into English.

GORDON (Alexander), M. A. a Scotch writer and antiquary. He was successively secretary to the society for encouragement of learning, the Egyptian club, and the antiquarian society. He went to Carolina, with governor Glen, where he died.

GORDON (The hon. George), commonly called lord George Gordon, was the son of Cosmo George duke of Gordon, and born in 1750. He entered into the navy when young, but quitted it on account of some dispute with lord Sandwich. He afterwards sat in parliament for Ludgershall, and distinguished himself by some strange speeches against the king and his ministers. But what chiefly brought him into notice was his opposition to the bill for granting farther toleration to Roman Catholics. His intemperance on this occasion proved the cause of the shameful riots in 1780, for which he was tried and acquitted. In 1786 he was excommunicated for not appearing as a witness in some cause. In 1788 he was found guilty of publishing a libel against the queen of France, on which he fled to Holland. Some time after he returned to England, and was taken in the disguise of a Jew, which profession he had adopted, and was committed to Newgate, where he died in 1793.

GORDONIA. Loblolly bay. In botany, a genus of the class monadelphia, order polyandria. Calyx single; style five-sided, with a five-cleft stigna; capsule five-celled, seeds two, with a foliaceous wing on one side. Four species. Trees and shrubs of the West Indies, or Carolina. The following are chiefly worthy of notice.

1. G. lasianthus, with downy calyx villous at the edge; yellow flowers, on long peduncles; leaves coriaceous, glabrous; capsules ovate. The leaves are evergreen; the tree, which is tall and straight, begins to blossom in May, and continues to blossom through the whole of summer. 2. G. Franklini. A shrub indigenous, also, to Carolina, twenty feet high; with oblong serrate, glabrous leaves; flowers sessile axillary, white, with the petals curled; and fruit globular.

GORE, in heraldry, one of the abatements, which, according to Guillim, denotes a coward. It is a figure consisting of two arch lines drawn one from the sinister chief, and the other from the sinister base, both meeting in an acute angle in the middle of the fess point.

GORE. S. (zone, Saxon.) 1. Blood effused from the body (Spenser). 2. Blood clotted or congealed (Milton

To GORE. v. a. (gebenian, Saxon.) 1. To stab; to pierce (Shakspeare). 2. To pierce with a horn (Dryden).

GORE ISLAND, a place discovered by Captain Cook, in his last voyage. Lat. 64. Ó N. Lon. 169. 0 W.

GOREE, a small barren island extending about three quarters of a mile in length, of a triangular form. It belongs to the French. Lat. 14. 40 N. Lon. 17. 25 W.

GOREE, a town of Holland. Lat. 51. 40 N. Lon. 4. 20 E.

GORGE, in architecture. 1. The nar rowest part of the Tuscan and Doric capitals, lying between the astragal and the annule. 2. A concave moulding, wider than the Scotia, but not so deep. 3. The neck of a column, 4. The throat of a chimney, or the part between the chambranle and the crowning of the mantle.

GORGE, in fortification, the entrance of the platform of any work. See FORTIFICATION.

In all the outworks, the gorge is the interval betwixt the wings on the side of the great ditch, as the gorge of a ravelin, half-moon, &c. These, it is to be observed, are all destitute of para-` pets; because if there were any, the besiegers, having taken possession of the work, might use it to defend themselves from the shot of the place; which is the reason that they are only fortified with palisadoes, to prevent a surprise.

The gorge of a bastion is nothing but the prolongation of the curtins from their angle with the flanks, to the centre of the bastion where they meet. When the bastion is flat, the

gorge is a right line, which terminates the distance between the two flanks.

GORGE. S. (gorge, French.) 1. The throat; the swallow (Sidney). 2. That which is gorged or swallowed (Spenser).

To GORGE. v. n. (gorger, French.) 1. To fill up to the throat; to glut; to satiate (Add.). 2. To swallow: as, the fish has gorged the hook.

GORGED, in heraldry, the bearing of a crown, coronet, or the like, about the neck of a lion, a swan, &c. and in that case it is said, the lion or cygnet is gorged with a ducal coronet, &c. Gorged is also used when the gorge, or neck of a peacock, swan, or the like bird, is of a different colour or metal from the rest.

GORGED, among farriers, denotes any dif fused swelling about a horse; but chiefly in his legs, occasioned rather by severe and hard work, than the effect of humours originating in a sizey or morbid state of the blood. A horse having his back sinews flushed, and legs thickened, so as to go short and stiff in action, but not broken down, is said to be gorged. Having the same appearances from humours, or a viscidity of the blood, he is said to be foul, and must be relieved by purgatives or diuretics, assisted by much hand-rubbing and other friction. Gorged horses should be blistered, and turned out in time, by which they frequently get fresh again: continued at work too long, they break down, and become cripples.

GORGEOUS. a. (gorgias, old French.) Fine; glittering in various colours; showy; splendid; magnificent (Milton).

GOʻRGEOUSLY. ad. Splendidly, magnificently; finely (Wotton).

GORGEOUSNESS. s. Splendour; magnificence; show.

GOʻRGET. s. (from gorge.) The piece of armour that defends the throat (Knolles). GORGERIN, in architecture, the little freizen the Doric capital.

GORGONA, a small island of the Tuscan Sea, remarkable for its anchovy fishery. Lat. 43.22 N. Lon. 10.0 E.

GORGONA, a small island of the South Sea, about twelve miles W. of the coast of Peru. Lat. 3. 20 S. Lon. 77. 50 W.

GORGONIA. In zoology, a genus of the class vermes, order zoophyta. Animal growing in the form of a plant; stem coriaceous, corky, woody, horny, or bony, composed of glassy fibres, or like stone, striate, tapering, dilated at the base, covered with a vascular or cellular flesh or bark, and becoming spongy and friable when dry; mouths or florets covering the surface of the stem, and polype-bearing. Forty-one species, found in different parts of the globe; of which four or five are inhabitants of the coasts or seas of our own country. The following are chiefly entitled to notice.

1. G. lepadifera. Dichotomous, with crowded, imbricate, reflected, companulate mouths or florets. Inhabits the Norway Seas: nearly two feet high: flesh pale, covered with minute whitish scales; florets covered with white, imbricate scales, and have the appear ance of small bernacles; stem white, with a stony base, and cartilaginous branches.

2. G. nobilis. Red coral, with outspread, irregular, slightly tapering branches; flesh red, soft, slippery, and full of minute pores; bone stony, bright red, and irregularly striate. Inhabits the Mediterranean and Red Seas; is very beautiful and valuable, and grows to about a foot in height: the pores or florets are irregularly placed, and a little prominent, consisting of eight valves, from which the polypes proceed, possessed of eight tentacles. This is the best and finest of our corals; for others of an inferior quality, see Isis.

3. G. fiabellumn. Venus's fan. Reticulate, with the branches compressed on the inner side; bark yellow, or purplish; bone black, horny, and slightly striate on the larger branches. Inhabits most seas; found about our own coasts; is often several feet high, and expanded into a large surface; flexile, horny, black; the older bark whitish or grey; pores irregularly placed, but generally in the form of a quincunx: trunk and branches pinnate, and by means of the smaller branches blending together, and forming an elegant kind of net work: polypes with cight claws. See Nat. Hist. Pl. CXXII.

GORGONS, in antiquity and mythology. Authors are not agreed in the account they give of the Gorgons. The poets represent them as three sisters, whose names were Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa; the latter of whom was mortal, and, having been deflowered by Nep

tune, was killed by Perseus; the two former were subject neither to age nor death. They are described with wings on their shoulders, with serpents round their heads, their hands were of brass, and their teeth of a prodigious size, so that they were objects of terror to mankind. After the death of Medusa, her sisters, according to Virgil, were appointed to keep the gate of the palace of Pluto.

Mullaque præterea variarum monstra fera

rum

GORGONES, Harpeiaque

Diodorus Siculus will have the Gorgons and Amazons to have been two warlike nations of women, who inhabited that part of Lidya which lay on the lake Tritonidis. The exter mination of these female nations was not ef fected till Hercules undertook and performed it. Others represent them as a kind of monstrous women, covered with hair, who lived in woods and forests. Others again make them animals, resembling wild sheep, whose eyes had a poisonous and fatal influence.

GORITZ, the capital of a country of the same name in the duchy of Carniola, with a castle. Lat. 46. 20 N. Lon. 13. 30 É.

GORLITZ, a strong and handsome town of Germany, in Upper Lusatia, on the river Neisse. Lat. 51. 10 N. Lon. 15. 40 E.

GOʻRMAND. s. (gourmand, French.) A greedy eater; a ravenous luxurious feeder.

To GO'RMANDIZE. v. n. (from gormand.) To feed ravenously; to eat greedily. GORMANDIZER. s. (from the verb.) A voracious eater.

GORSE. s. (gons, Saxon.) Furz, a thick prickly shrub, that bears yellow flowers. See ULEX.

GORTERIA, in botany, a genus of the class syngenesia, order polygamia frustranea. Receptacle naked; down woolly; florets of the ray ligulate; calyx one-leafed; clothed with imbricate scales. Seven species, all shrubs of the Cape: there are other plants, and espe cially of the genera russinia and berckheya, which have at times been erroneously introduced as species of gorteria; but which are here restored to their proper stations.

GORY. a. (from gore.) 1. Covered with congealed blood (Spenser). 2. Bloody; murderous; fatal (Shakspeare).

GOSHAWK. s. (gor, goose, hafoc, a hawk.) A hawk of a large kind. See FALCO.

GOSHEN, in ancient geography, a canton of Egypt, which Joseph procured for his father and his brethren, when they came to dwell in Egypt. This country lay between Palestine and the city of Tanais, and the allotment of the Hebrews reached southward as far as the Nile.

GOSLAR, a town of Lower Saxony, in Germany, where it is supposed gunpowder was first invented by a monk. It is 28 miles S. of Brunswick. Lat. 52. 0 N. Lon. 10. 42 E.